Welcome to My World
by Audrie the Clever Girl
Summary: Hermione's introduction to the magical world is neither magical nor enchanting as one would believe.


_Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling._

The first thing I remember is waking up to the sun and wondering how long it had been since I had slept in late enough to allow the sun to wake me.

It was warm on my cheeks, and it filled the room with golden light. It was magical. I knew that this was not going to be the case for long though. It might be soon that I was looking at a padded wall, with no windows except for those in halls and common rooms. I had been up all night discussing it with my family.  
No wonder I had slept in so late. I had stayed up till the hours just before dawn, where the sky is dark and the stars are out, but the blue of the sky starts to take on a lighter hue hardly noticeable. How long had we been talking, arguing about what was going to happen to me? Too long.

I tried to tell them that there was no reason for me to go to a hospital. They didn't listen, and they never intended to. Their minds were made up before we had our family intervention, and the whole thing was a charade to justify their decision and make them feel like they had included me. Which they hadn't. I don't think I said more than two words. I spend most of my time looking out the window, through the tree tops, at the clear night sky and slowly watched it turn to dawn. What had they been saying most of the time? I really don't remember, nor do I care to remember. They would send me away no matter the objections I made. They were afraid of me and what I was becoming. I was almost eleven when we, they, had this discussion. Thinking back on it no wonder they wouldn't have listened to the things I had said. Things were getting weird in my life. Things I couldn't explain. I was bright, but I was also still very young. They were, and are my parents. They only wanted what was best for me.

The letter that seemed to magically appear inside our front door on my eleventh birthday was all the explanation I needed, and magic it was. My parents had a hard time accepting it, but they were desperate for any explanation as to why animals were dying in our garden, bugs piled up on the window seal, and wind seemed to blow through the house even when all the doors were closed and the windows shuttered. They were so desperate that they were willing to accept the explanation from Hogwarts School of Whitchcraft and Wizardry that I was a witch and that they wanted me to attend their school starting that same year. However crazy it was, they wanted it to be true that such abilities and places existed, they wanted my queer behavior explained, they wanted to believe it was all a normal occurrence. In the end they acted like it was. Thinking about it now I think they were looking for anything that would get me away from their home. I'm sure they thought I was possessed, but they loved me, so sending me to a magical boarding school, however suspicious, was the best they could do. It amazed me how just a few days before they had talked about sending their only daughter to a hospital for mental kids, and now they were the ones acting mental. School for Whitchcraft and Wizardry? At first I thought it was just a ruse, something they had set up with a children's hospital to make me more comfortable with the idea of leaving home for nine months out of the year.

It became more apparent when they dropped me off with a grizzled old woman in odd clothes in front of a building that read "The Leaky Cauldron" in painted letters over an oldfashion sign in downtown London that they were either going all out on this trick or that this was the real deal and I had some sort of magical ability. When I was handed over, and my parents said their goodbyes, I knew that either way my parents had left me in the care of strangers, Magical or otherwise.

"Right this way Miss Granger," the woman said as she lead me through the door and into the musty old bar. There was noise, smoke, and the smell of stale beer that seemed to hang over everything. I was in a daze. I didn't even know when I would see home again.

It turned out that it wasn't all that bad. I wrote home as soon as I had gotten my room at school. Schools in the magical world were code for bewitched castles in the middle of an ever changing terrain, where parents sent their children to become...what? Fuctioning members of the Magical World? I told my parents about the normal things. The great hall, but not the sorting hat, magically appearing food, or owls that delivered mail. I told them about classes, but not that I used a wand almost as much as I used pen and paper. I told them about the rooms, but not that you had to talk to a painting for her to allow you inside. I think that they might have lost it if they heard all of the things that were so normal in this world, and so wrong in ours. They had sent me away so they would not have to deal with how weird and dangerous they thought I was becoming, not to enhance my capabilities in the odd and unnatural. I will remember forever the night I arrived in the great hall. The boat ride had made my already frizzed hair stand on end. Things, live things knocked into the bottom of our boat and made the water ripple in their wake. All the other kids oohed and ahhed, but there was something sinister about how black the water was and how the creatures tormenting us seemd to lurk just beneath the surface. Then there was the walk into the great hall. People were laughing and gossiping. Was I the only person here who looked terrified and so sorely out of place? No, I had seen a few like me, a very few. A black haired boy with glasses, and a few others that seemed to blend into the background like I did. Did their parents think that they were crazy and dangerous too?

Once in the hall we stood under a magical portrait of the night sky and hundreds of floating candles. All around us were older kids sitting at four tables, looking at us like fresh meat. I guess that is what we were. A woman with a severe bun and glasses placed a ragged old hat on an equally old and worn stool. The seam across its middle burst open and from its mouth, i guess you could call it, swelled a song. A song of houses, cunning, bravery, intelligence, and kindness. I was too much in shock to really listen to what it was saying. I should have grabbed a book to read about this place for the train ride. For a moment I remembered packing Hogwarts, A History and the bottom of my trunk. Wrong answer on my part. Should have skimmed a few pages. I guess part of me was still hoping this was going to be a reform school for the mentally ill children of England. I made a note to read it as soon as I unpacked and had some free time. Then my name was being called and I found myself walking to the front of the stage to have a seat and be placed. It was the most intimate few moments of my life. In the seconds the hat was on my head I felt that it knew everything about me. All of the things I would never tell another living soul. Not only that though, it knew my feelings. Not only could it think my thoughts but it could feel my reactions to those thoughts in such a way I was sure for a moment it was part of me. It whispered to me. Asked me questions in a slither of a voice that seemed very unreal; I couldn't tell if it was in my head or whispered in my ear. Either way when it was over I felt sick and dizzy. I walked toward the cheering table, just like I had seen others do. I looked like a lost little girl, and thinking about it...I was.

"Hey, hey you." I turned around as I walked between classes. It was a boy in my year, but not in my House. I didn't know him, but his blond hair and grey eyes irritated me. I looked away. "Hey, I was talking to you, Mudblood." I stopped. I had heard that a few times since I had gotten to Hogwarts, but hearing it from this boy who seeped arrogance, ignorance, from every pore made my teeth grind together. "What?" I tone was clipped and I narrowed my eyes at him. There must have been something that told him I wasn't in the mood for his rich boy attitude because he just spat at my feet and walked away. I stormed down the hall to my last class for the day, Potions. I was good at science, and potions was proving to be science but with much different ingredients, a dash of chemistry, and just enough preposterous notions that it was turning into on of my favorite classes. I was learning how to made a potion that would heal some sort of magical burn. Professor Snape had said when we finished it was supposed to form an unnaturally red liquid, which just made me roll my eyes. He added that none of us would finish, and if we did it was going to be such a dreadful concoction that it would gall him to even test it on a mouse. He had told us on more than one occasion he hated mice. When we were called to turn in our potions i had just finished adding the last of the items the recipe called for. One of dozens of earth toned powders, goo, liquids, bugs, and herbs that went into the mixing pot. I had no idea how these were going to turn red. But when I corked a vile and labeled it there was a slight tinge of red. A small satisfied smile quirked my lips, and I placed it on his desk before leaving class feeling a little proud. That was week one of class, and I only got better. I always felt an envious pair of eyes on me, one that made the hair on the nape of my neck stand and warning bells ring in my ears. Draco Malfoy, the boy who had spat at my feet I learned, was envious of me. There is nothing more frightening than a beautiful boy turning green with envy, except when I found out envy leads to hate and torment. That was much more frightening.


End file.
